Where is he?

So, after all the dramas of the previous week, last weekend I finally went on my date. We went for a walk along a beautiful beach and then went for lunch in a village pub. Sounds good right? It was. Mostly. I mean, from the second I saw him walking towards my car in the passenger side mirror, I knew he was a slightly broken shadow of his former self. Something in the walk gave it away. Like someone who was trying to remember how to swagger when once it would have come without thought. But, I still felt a wee bit excited, was still intrigued to know more and was just looking forward to a lovely afternoon with a man who wasn’t my Dad.

We got on fine, he’s good company, conversation was easy but it became really clear that he’s just lost his mojo since his wife left him for a woman. I don’t know if any of you have ever had to embark on the mojo hunt for yourselves but it is an intensely personal journey and one that to some extent no one can help you along. Once you have been on that journey yourself, you can always see when others are going through it. I hunted out my mojo a few years ago, it took me several years of intense therapy, facing myself and going on adventures to get where I am. He’s at the start of that mojo hunt, having self-medicated with drink for a while, he’s starting to realise that booze isn’t the answer, or so he said. And so before we had even walked back along the beach I knew we could never be more than friends.

And then to lunch. He drank three pints over lunch. The first he met like an absent lover. Like he had been longing for it, like there was no other taste that could satisfy. He had drunk half the second pint before food even arrived. Now, I may well have drunk three pints over lunch before but certainly not with a date who wasn’t drinking. In those circumstances, one is perfectly acceptable but any more than that seems a little rude at best. And he changed, as the alcohol caressed his brain, flashes of the cocksure man he used to be re-emerged. And I remembered why I had first liked him. And I realised that I liked him much more now when he was sober and vulnerable and honest and a little bit broken. But now, I didn’t fancy him at all.

Anyway, I figured we could be friends. We kept messaging. And then we broached politics. I told him I would be voting Green. He told me IN SHOUTY CAPITALS that I had to vote Scottish National Party. I told him shouting like a crazed nationalist and refusing to discuss anything only made me surer. He unfriended me!! And that’s where we still are. I’m sure we’ll meet again sometime and I hope that he will be further down the road of his mojo hunt.

Anyway, that all aside, it was really lovely to spend an afternoon with a man who is definitely a man’s man. He was chivalrous, he bought me lunch, he helped me fasten the baby carrier, he held doors open, he held the baby while I went to the loo. I’m so accustomed to single parenting at this stage and so ferociously independent that allowing anyone to be ‘the man’ was both a surprise and a treat. It made me yearn for a partner in crime. For someone to lean on. For someone with a big hand to hold. For someone to mock me. For someone to help me even when I don’t need it. For someone else to take charge for a change.

And then that evening, my travel husband came to visit. I loved this man from the moment I met him in Johannesburg bus station. I loved him all through our crazy Mozambique adventure. And I love him now. I told him to leave his girlfriend and come and play baby daddy and I was only half joking. He told me it was beautiful to see me as a mother which still makes me well up just to type it. And he told me he was proud of me. We played backgammon as we always did. And I won as I always did (that bit might not be strictly true, he claims he won more, but perspective is an odd thing). But mostly, why I fell in a heap and cried my little eyes out when he left was because he walked into my house, picked up my baby and other than one feed I gave her, he held her all night and she fell asleep in his arms.

I want for my baby girl to grow up knowing a man with arms that she can feel safe enough in to just fall asleep. I want that for me as well. It’s not that I need him. I don’t. We’re doing just fine without this man figure. And women do it all the time. And women cope. Because that’s what you have to do. But oh, I would love for these circumstances to be different. I would love for my baby daddy to have tried to at least be a friend to me and a father figure to her. I would love to have someone to talk to in these long evenings after my baby has gone to bed. I want to feel desirable.

And so, a date with a broken man and a reunion with an old lover, all in the same day, made me face these things and realise certain inalienable truths.